


My Ankles Are Tired and I'm Home Here to Stay

by Tinywren



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: Anxiety, Comfort, F/F, Fluff, OCD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-18
Updated: 2016-11-18
Packaged: 2018-08-31 18:15:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8588728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tinywren/pseuds/Tinywren
Summary: It’s irrational, really, she knows jumping to worst case conclusions is bad science.





	

Exhaustion is prickling in Erin’s fingertips when she resigns for the night; she stretches where she sits and pushes the mass of neatly scripted equations out of sight and across the desk. She’s made slow, slogging progress today despite the dizzying loops of stressors knocking themselves around in her brain. She pushes herself out from the desk, an imposing, intricately carved oaken thing that Holtzmann claimed to have unearthed in an alleyway.

“It was buried a riveting assortment of ignition coils and hubcaps, wasted potential, in my opinion,” she had trailed off, bouncing ever so slightly on her heels, musing the merits of discarded car parts and their role in nuclear ghost-busting weaponry. She shot Erin a twinkling smirk that suggested that she had not, in fact, found the desk in an alley, and almost assuredly not in a way Erin would approve of. Any remark about ethics and _actual laws, Holtz,_ sputtered to a stop in her throat as the engineer’s eyes scattered laughter, her mouth tugged open into a lazy, soft sort of chuckle, gaze steady on Erin.  


“I, uh, physics,” Erin had offered, words stilted as her toes tingled, face frustratingly flushed under Holtzmann’s attention. She had made her best effort at a casual retreat and threw her hand up behind her, fingers attempting a jerky wave, and sought refuge at her whiteboard. For physics.  


Erin continues her measured routine and gathers her previously shoved papers, only vaguely registering the depth of night outside. Hours seem to slip away when she immerses herself in her work, the haze of calculations is slow and sure. It’s a pattern she takes comfort in, a cycle she can control.  


Abby had left the firehouse many hours earlier and warmly patted her back in passing; Patty followed suit not thirty minutes later, and chastised with a light “Don’t stay too late, baby, there’s steam coming out of that brain of yours”. She has evidently failed to follow that advice, and as she passes a quick glance at the clock it blares out 12:56 a.m. brightly. That isn’t to say she’s surprised to hear Holtzmann lightly tinkering in the lab above her; often she arrives early, _too early_ , in the morning, clutching desperately to a steaming travel mug, with the symphony of vigorously thumping synth pop and welding already greeting her. She doubts the engineer ever leaves.  


It’s different at night, though, soft almost; the music is less pounding rhythm and more drawn out melody, the ‘poofs’ traded for quieter, more methodical projects. The light beat of Holtzmann’s current song selection reverberates through the otherwise empty building, “ _you light my morning sky, with burning love_ ”. She mulls it over for a moment, identifying the tune. Elvis? She cracks a grin at that.  


After zipping her sensible briefcase, evidence of her day’s struggle safely tucked away, she moves to push her chair in, lingering for a moment. A clatter resounds from the upstairs lab, in sync with the abrupt stop of rock and roll love ballads, and Erin feels a flash of panic; it’s irrational, really, she knows jumping to worst case conclusions is bad science. This habit of hers, to leap first into dizzying, heart pounding fear has been put through the ringer since she became a ghostbuster. _A ghostbuster_. Never in her childhood days of white-knuckled terror at the spirit at the foot of her bed, that even she began to believe was a product of her obsessive and anxious mind, could she have imagined proving the existence of and physically confronting the root of her fears. It’s been liberating, mostly; never good in a fight Gilbert fighting, and winning.  


There are paralyzing moments, however; when she feels thrown back the distance she’s grown since being fired from Columbia, when she feels small. It’s less often now, and generally trivial things, like when Abby doesn’t tell her she’s going to the Chinese restaurant that’s a ridiculously lengthy subway ride away, and her resulting moment of panic when she’s been gone for over an hour. In those instances, she catches herself; she uses her years of scientific reasoning and deduces the most likely solution, which her uneasy mind cautiously accepts.  


Sometimes, though, it’s not so small. Holtzmann had recruited her to help adjusting the proton packs, all sparkling eyes and drawn out smiles, and Erin leapt over her apprehension for construction and wires. Building things was so many leaps and bounds away from her theories and equations, but she agreed for no reason she could mathematically quantify. Not because the reason had dimples and always remembered the way she liked her coffee, milk and _too much sugar, even for me, and that’s saying a lot, Gilbert_. No way.  


Her role turned out to be holding things steady while Holtzmann leaned in at her side; connecting wires and intricately soldering generators. Erin had lost herself in the engineer’s swift work, each movement of her hands was calculated; deft fingers working the metal and energy with the ease that comes with practice. _Muscle memory_. It was such a contrast to how she carried herself in the world, all wild cries and reckless, explosive, dancing. Erin had to continually remind herself to concentrate on the task at hand, not easily assisted by Holzmann’s proximity to her, softly pressed into her side. Even more frustrating was the rush of spices, motor oil, and electrical fire that clung to the engineer and headily filled Erin’s senses.  


“Do you want to try?” Erin snapped her eyes away from Holzmann’s still busy hands, bewildered and red-faced.  


“Do I what?” She forced out, words stiff. The engineer grinned at her reply, obviously pleased with herself, but there was something tentative in her eyes.  


“You seemed pretty focused there, Gilbert. Thought I’d offer you a chance at the wheel, with my gracious and wildly capable assistance, of course.” She held aloft her soldering iron.  


Erin hesitated, “No, no. It’s okay, really. I wouldn’t want to mess with your,” she gestured wildly with her hands, “process.” Gleefully unaware, or perhaps painfully aware of the physicist’s ongoing battle with her still pounding heart, Holtzmann winked.  


“Ookaay,” she drew out lazily, emphasizing each vowel for an absurd amount of time, “my process will remain unscathed. However, I still very much need you to hold these two particular bits steady,” she indicated with a direct eye, “which you seem to have forgotten. All this excitement, I’m sure.” She ended her spiel; each word tinged with amusement, and Erin’s flush escalated, if possible.  


“Right, sorry,” Erin replaced her hands, garnering what she could from Holtzmann’s mile a minute narration of her work, the words so hastily garbled together they were barely intelligible. At the next pause, evidentially one needs to breathe occasionally, she spoke quietly, “Holtz, do you actually need my help with this?” Her part in the whole operation seemed very manageable by the engineer’s opposite, unburdened hand.  


“Not really,” she replied, quieter than Erin.  


“So-” Holtzmann jerked back mechanically to her toil without a reply, and the physicist dropped the wires she had purchase on to further press the other woman. Evidentially, it was a sensitive sort of machinery, and her miniscule tug and drop had caused a reaction. A bad reaction. The proton pack was whirring, slowly, and then very fast.  


“Uh oh,” Holtzmann bellowed, before abruptly dragging Erin to the ground under the worktable. Then the sparking started, bright and flashing and green. “Cover your ears!” She yelled again, the static in the air causing her voice to crackle. The explosion was loud enough to shake Erin to her core, even behind the fixed safety of her trembling palms. She hadn’t realized that her eyes were clamped shut until the engineer was gently prying her still rigid hands from her ears. “It’s okay now,” her voice was low and kind, too kind, in a way she’d never heard before.  


“Shoot, I’m so sorry, Holtz, sometimes I forget how unstable all of this equipment is, I don’t know why, there’s usually always a fire up here, not to mention the explosions every day. Oh my god, I could have killed you, and you’d be dead, and so would I, and then I’d never be able to apologize. I’d live out my days as a ghost whose unfinished business revolves around an apology she’d never get to make!”  


“Erin.” The corners of her mouth twitched up, voice somewhere between nervous laughter and adrenaline fueled exuberance. “It’s okay, this happens, like you said, every day.”  


She pulled in a shuddering breath, and the air was heavy with smoke and silence. Her anxiety was tail spinning, her heart less lovesick and more palpitating. Thinking circles around Holtzmann’s words, she attempted to reason with herself. “You really aren’t upset I detonated one of your babies?” She attempted at a weak smile.  


“I think I have it within myself to forgive you,” she grinned back. “Are you okay, though?” Her gaze searched Erin for any sign of injury, her distress already noted.  


“Yeah, in my list of life threatening escapades, this hits the bar pretty low.”  


“Battling malevolent entities really ruins good old fashioned danger, doesn’t it?” Her words were teasing, the earlier conversation already forgotten.  


“Even so, I think I’m all danger-ed out for today.” She stood, wobbling to her feet, surveying the damage. Blessedly, there wasn’t a chain reaction of unwieldy ghostbusting equipment, and whatever other strange unidentifiable machines the engineer tinkered with. There was, however, a wide ring of ash surrounding the charred remains of the proton pack they had been working on.  


“Poor Penelope, she was the youngest of the bunch, you know,” Holtzmann mourned as she climbed out from the table behind her.  


“I should really help you clean this up,” she made a wide sweeping motion, jumpy energy still coursing through her.  


“You really don’t need to, I’m quite the skilled cleaner of scorch marks and burnt residue, daily exposure will do that for a girl. Besides, I know for a fact nine-thirty is way past your bedtime.”  


“Har har. I’ll just throw this away,” she murmured feebly, ever the stickler for manners, and moved to sweep some of the ash into her cupped palm.  


“NO! No, Erin, that’s now, uh, technically nuclear waste.” She froze, and was quick to give herself a wide berth away from the debris.  


“I’ll leave you to it then, thanks, Holtz.”  


With the dull roar of anxiety rushing in her ears and her head swimming, she left the firehouse and hailed a cab. She stood numbly under the spray of the shower until the water was no longer warm, and then yielded to her exhaustion, falling asleep almost instantly. Her hands shook during every bust for a month after that. She was convinced that even after Holtzmann’s repairs she had somehow inadvertently put everyone in danger. She worked through her specific brand of scientific self-soothing over and over, until she was no longer afraid. The numbers made sense. It was an equation, a law of the universe. Her fretting had no impact on the cosmos, and worrying didn’t make anything more or less likely.  


It was this she was reminding herself of as she stood at the base of the stairs, the still silent lab looming above her. She shifts from foot to foot before bounding up the stairs.  


“Holtz?” Her voice is too high, foreign even to her ears. Another clatter sounds and the blinking lights of machinery create a kaleidoscopic, hazy view of the lab. A familiar mess of curls emerges from beneath a bench on the other side of the lab.  


“Erin?” The engineer approaches, arms full of an amalgamation of metal parts, the duffel bag slung across her shoulders likely stuffed with the same. Her hair is backlit by electrical blues and reds, and Erin belatedly realizes how pretty this all is, _she is_. Her relief takes charge, though, and tries her best to look casual, but twitching fingers worry at the skin around her nails.  


“Oh, hey. I just heard your music stop and thought I’d, you know, pop by.”  


“Pop by?” Holtzmann is unconvinced, a barely visible eyebrow arched. “It’s one in the morning.”  


“I just thought, it was a little weird, the silence, the clattering,” she motions to the engineers jam-packed arms, “and you usually don’t leave this early, or at all.”  


“Well, I do have children to feed.”  


“Children?”  


“Chinchillas.”  


“Right.”  


“I can’t have anyone thinking I slack off. I’m an excellent mother, I do it all for my babies.” She grins and adjusts the strap of her duffel bag, “Are you doing alright, ghost girl?”  


Erin smiles dimly at the nickname, somehow gentle from Holtzmann’s mouth. “I just worry sometimes, about everyone. It’s silly! I’m a physicist, I have a PhD!”  


The engineer softens and steps closer to Erin, her bag and arms messily emptied on a nearby table. “Hey, look at me Er, it’s okay.” Her hand is on the physicist’s shoulder now, a grounding weight. “Not to breach your health and safety territory here, but you know on airplanes how they give that debrief before you take off?” Erin nods. “Well you have to put on your own oxygen mask before helping anyone else, or doing anything else, because you can’t do any good if you’re not taking care of yourself.” Her words are irregular and bumpy, a common occurrence when she strays from her usual front of jokes. “Dr. Gorin used to tell me that all the time in grad school, that the world of engineering could wait until I slept and ate. I used to run on nothing but the pressure I’d put on myself, _recklessness has its place, Jillian._ ” She chuckles, but it’s stiff, and she’s searching the physicist’s eyes.  


Surprising herself, Erin leans to mash her face into Holtzmann’s shoulder, lifting a shaky arm to wrap around her waist. The angle is all wrong, and her neck is already aching, but she muffles out a low “Thank you.” The engineer stiffens and keeps her stance like she’s in rigor mortis. Brain reeling, she only vaguely registers to reciprocate the embrace, fighting the overwhelming sensation of every nerve in her body alight.  


The darkness is warm and their silence is comfortable. Erin feels safe, like she’s enveloped up in the feeling of home. It’s strange and not new how her heart is thumping, and she knows someone is going to have to speak, to acknowledge this change in the universe around them.  


“Oh!” Holtzmann exclaims suddenly, pulling away, leaving a cavern of warmth on Erin’s chest. She’s across the room now, sifting through a pile of what seems to be her clothing with the occasional smattering of wrenches. She crows triumphantly and returns, holding a silver ring aloft on her palm. “It spins.” she supplies, staring pointedly at the floor, “The inner band, I mean. It helps when you think too much.”  


“Are you sure I can have this?” The engineer nods, so she delicately plucks the band from her open hand and slides it onto her index finger. She tries not to think about how much this feels like exchanging vows, and gives a few experimental turns with her thumb. “I love it,” she smiles, feeling lighter than she has in months.  


“Just think of it as an extension of the Swiss army knife, with a less defensive function.”  


“Thank you for being here tonight,” she blurts, “I mean, obviously, you didn’t plan to be here, or plan this. But thank you.” There is a giddy sort of happiness bursting in her chest, catapulting off her nervousness.  


“My pleasure,” she drawls, dimples ever present, “and as much as I treasure every second here, I do still have kids to attend to.” She slowly gathers her bag and pile of parts, stopping to calculate the most efficient way to carry her supplies via mental Tetris.  


“I could help you carry all that back, your apartment being so far, and all.” Erin interjects, the events of the night manifesting in unusual boldness.  


“Well, if you are offering, good and noble Lady Gilbert, I would be ever so honored by your aid tonight.”  


She snickers, “Do you actually need my help?”  


“Not really.”  


Holtzmann doesn’t jerk away this time, her eyes are unnervingly focused. They’re uncertain, but gleaming with something Erin hopes she isn’t imagining. So she kisses her. It’s clunky, and the engineer’s arm is pinned beneath their bodies, clutching desperately to what feels suspiciously like a steel pipe. Then all at once Holtzmann is moving against her, and she’s soaring. She feels dizzy almost immediately, the scent of smoke and cloves flooding every sense in the best way. She has to grip Holtzmann’s arms for support, smiling so hard into the kiss she feels as like her face is going to split. She scarcely has time to process the tenderness of her lips, the gentle grip at her neck, when they part, gasping. All Erin can do is laugh. It’s ridiculous, teary eyed laughter that makes her stomach ache.  


“I can’t believe I did that,” she marvels, “I’m going to do it again!”  


Now Holtzmann is laughing, and it turns out to be a struggle to keep their lips connected, so they settle for collapsing into each other. Erin can’t recall her heart ever being so full.  


“You know, we really should have coordinated this earlier.” 

* * *

They stumble out of the firehouse together, arms brimming, but still managing to interlock pinkies as they walk under the streetlights.  


“What are you going to use all of this for, anyways?”  


“You probably wouldn’t want to know.”  


“Alright, I’m going to let that slide,” she smirks, bumping the shorter woman’s shoulder with her own playfully.  


After two subway connections and an excruciatingly long walk that makes Erin insist her kitten heels are smiting her every step, Holtzmann announces they’ve reached her building. She’s on the twenty third floor of an unassuming building, on an unassuming street, but Erin feels like she’s in an incredible and unreal universe.  


“I would apologize for the mess, but I’m betting it’s a given.”  


It is indeed, a mess, but it’s so undeniably Holtzmann that she can’t bring herself to be fazed. The engineer has dumped her cargo on a couch that has been better days, piled with worn quilts, papers, and now loose metal and a duffel bag. Erin follows suit, and watches as she squats by a cage against the other wall, portioning off what looks like grass hay to four grey bits of fuzz while cooing.  


“They’re so cute! You’re raising quite the family there.”  


“My kids are my pride and joy.” Holtzmann grins with a wink, standing.  


There’s a beat of stillness, and Erin waits to be thrown back to reality, where she’s home alone and is having some sort of cruel, hyper-realistic lucid dream. Everything stays where it is. The walls are still covered in haphazardly hung blueprints and postcards from places she’s never heard of, and there is a very real, impossibly wonderful and strange human in front of her.  


“Are you hungry?”  


Erin notes the dull twinge in her stomach, “You cook?”  


“Sometimes, nothing too fancy. It’s a good way to divert energy when I have too much. I make a lot of paella after three a.m.”  


“I could go for some food,” she giggles.  


“How do you feel about grilled cheese?”  


“I’d say I'm myself a fan.”  


Erin watches as Holtzmann spreads oil on a skillet placing two slices of bread and likely too much cheese onto each. She’s lulled into a quiet, almost meditative state by the warmth of the kitchen and the sizzle of bread.  


“You know, you’ve had me since day one.” Erin turns, the engineer is now facing her, hand gripping the pan like a lifeline. “I always thought this was a lost cause, I can’t believe it wasn’t, _isn’t._ ” Her voice is wavering, and Erin notices a few tears escaping, hastily swiped at by the engineer’s free hand. “I’m just so happy,” she gurgles wetly, “this isn’t something I ever thought I deserved.”  


Erin wordlessly embraces the smaller woman, and they stand still and quiet as she traces mindless equations onto her back. “You deserve everything, Holtz.”  


It’s ten minutes later when Holtzmann roars, “Shit, the grilled cheese!”  


They crunch on the blackened sandwiches that only pass the bar of edible by a slight, debatable margin, and curl into the couch only after Erin insists they clear the clutter. The engineer turns on a nature documentary, an apparent secret passion of hers and makes occasional, horrified commentary on the fates of the baby animals. She later extensively deliberates the ‘atrocities of the food chain’.  


The night dwindles on, easy and hopelessly gentle, the hum of the television a soothing white noise, and Erin’s mind is still.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first ever fic, and I would love to hear what you think! The title is from the song Whole Wide World by Big Tree; I highly reccomend it.


End file.
